


Arctic Lullabies For The Summer Months

by Numanum



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst with a Happy Ending, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Murder, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Panic Attacks, Self-Esteem Issues, Social Anxiety, Technoblade has PTSD, Technoblade-centric, and, but it's not his fault, but it's not the focus, he also has, kind of???, reverse adoption
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:14:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26377888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Numanum/pseuds/Numanum
Summary: Still, even as he hears the pre-games parade marching through the streets, he can’t imagine being this excited to see young nobles from all over the world throw each other out of the sky or just beat each other to death. It’s a little hard to watch, really, even though he hasn’t actually had to see the stupid little cookies with his likeness painted on them in frosting.Yet.Glory to the victors is an understatement here, he muses as he finally turns away from the window to refocus on his book. He can hear the knocks of the servants as they come by to get the others ready for the parade. No one touches his door, not even to jiggle the knob; they know that he hears them, just as he did last year and the year before that.Sometimes, he wonders if all of the empty rooms after the games bother the people who live here like it does him.Or: Technoblade leaves his family and finds a better one with the other people who actually treat him well, but not before I put him through a lot of stuff he doesn't deserve <3
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Dave | Technoblade, Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Dave | Technoblade & GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), Dave | Technoblade & Phil Watson, Dave | Technoblade & TommyInnit, Dave | Technoblade & Wilbur Soot, Dave | Technoblade & Wilbur Soot & Phil Watson, GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Technoblade & Everyone, Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 92
Kudos: 1042





	1. Free Fall

**Author's Note:**

> First official Techno fic!

It’s miserable here, Technoblade decides as he stares out of the ridiculously ornate window in his room. The room itself is far too large for one person, royal or not, and everything in it screams of a wealth that’s been built on bloodshed, kicked puppies, and orphan’s tears. Almost every feature of the room is unnecessary and covered in gold, and yet Techno is positive that he would find carbon copies of this same wealthy room all over the castle if he ever felt inclined to actually leave his room and look. He doesn’t, as he’s not really wanting to interact with any of the others that are residing here. Having to see them in the hallways is awkward enough, and he's never really sure what to say to people that he's going to be beating up. The extroverts will stop by, but they never say anything to him, which is how he likes it to be. He’s not directly avoiding anyone, not really- they just can’t ever seem to get through his locked door. It’s tragic really, all of the time to himself that he’s gotten since he arrived a few days ago. His poor introverted mind is wailing in pain due to an extreme withdrawn of social interaction.

Impassively, he leans his head onto his hand and ignores the book on the desk in front of him. The panes of glass reflect the gilded room decor in their shiny surfaces, which he ignores in favor of staring outside with only mild unease.

There’s no snow for the sun to reflect off of here, just as there wasn’t last year, and it makes the world seem miserably dimmer somehow- the only real difference is that looking outside is less likely to blind you, but it’s enough to nearly make him homesick. And everything is disgustingly grey here, he knows, even as he stares out at the rolling green hills; it’s not the first time he’s been here, and so far he’s earned himself a room with a view, which is more than everyone else can say. He gets the nice view, and they get the greyness of the sprawling city and it's lit streets. It’s possibly the most useless flex he can do, but it’s also currently his only flex, so he’s using it to its full potential.

By not interacting with anyone.

A waste, some would call it, but at least this way he doesn’t have to wear his fancy clothes, the mantle of which is both extremely heavy and uncomfortable. The fluffy white collar of it itches at his neck when he wears it, and it's not meant to be worn in this kind of weather anyway. No, Technoblade gets to relax as well as he can in a simple white silk blouse and some comfortable pants that he wears solely because some people have keys to his room and no one wants to see that. His hair even gets to remain down in a comfortably loose braid, rather than the bun it gets twisted into that pulls at his head and gives him constant headaches, which in turn make him scowl, which then makes him seem a lot scarier than he actually is. He's managed to craft himself an image of apathetic bloodshed, which he does nothing to enforce or correct in any way. How he looks to the public is remarkably important in everyone’s eyes except for his and, on the days where he catches him at just the right times, Phil's.

In the end, it’s not going to matter, anyway. 

You either win the games and come back again every year when the weather gets warm, or you die and your room is left empty until someone new comes along to claim it just as temporarily as you had. Technoblade either wins this year's series of games and gets a parade thrown for him here and then back in the Antarctic Empire, or he finally gets dethroned this time and he doesn’t have to come back. The downside of that is that, wherever he would end up if he somehow went over the side or was killed, Phil would probably lose his mind with worry. The upside is that he doesn’t have to care about that if he’s dead- and that’s what losing the games leads to, eventually.

No one ever comes back from falling into the void under the arena.

(It was a tough lesson to learn the first time, because the part about not re-spawning was sort of glossed over, like most of the bloody history behind this game. He'll never forget watching someone fall and seeing nothing there to catch them, not even a thin net of spider silk.)

Everything Technoblade knows about the games is something that he’s learned over time- perks of being the best, he supposes. Though it’s not really a perk at all since the champion of the last game has to come back for every single one until they don’t win and become irrelevant to the general public.

So again, in the long run, how he looks doesn’t really matter.

Still, even as he hears the pre-games parade marching through the streets, he can’t imagine being this excited to see young nobles from all over the world throw each other out of the sky or just beat each other to death. It’s a little hard to watch, really, even though he hasn’t actually had to see the stupid little cookies with his likeness painted on them in frosting.

Yet.

Glory to the victors is an understatement here, he muses as he finally turns away from the window to refocus on his book. He can hear the knocks of the servants as they come by to get the others ready for the parade. No one touches his door, not even to jiggle the knob; they know that he hears them, just as he did last year and the year before that.

Sometimes, he wonders if all of the empty rooms after the games bother the people who live here like it does him.

* * *

Eventually, even his locked door can’t protect him from being paraded around by his parents in front of all of the blood-thirsty people who chant his name and wear pig masks to show their misplaced support. He’s dressed up in his heavy mantle and a pristine white shirt that's neck is tied with a ridiculous little velvet ribbon that’s never had an actual use aside from choking him if he breathes too deeply. The pants are also horrible- too tight and made of leather of all things- but his least favorite part of his outfit has to be the wide red sash tied painfully tight around his waist to accentuate it or something like that. Between the ribbon and the sash, he’s surprised that he can breathe at all. To make it all worse, his bun is already giving him a tension headache, which his heavy crown isn't helping.

His mother, who'd tugged the end of his braid harshly before someone had put it in a bun, looks perfectly composed as she stands to his right and slightly behind him. His father, who's almost forced the crown on his head, stands to his left.

Technoblade feels ridiculous, all dressed up just to walk around- he won’t even _have_ his mantle or his crown tomorrow, Phil will be holding on to them until he returns, so there’s no point in wearing them now. Despite his protests on the matter and his logical reasoning, he’s here, wearing it all in the miserably hot weather for the sole purpose of catching the people’s attention. Attention that he already has, due to him being the champion since he turned sixteen. He despises this whole process. It’s like an odd mix between an extreme sport and a pet competition, really; people wear his colors and he’s being walked around and judged so he can be given his rank, his starting island to report to in the morning, and a pat on the back for participation before he’s going to be put back up in his room until the games actually start early tomorrow morning. His mantle has never felt heavier on his shoulders than it does now as he’s marched before the crowd under the setting sun. The white fluff on the collar tickles his neck irritably, and he has to resist the urge to scratch at the area.

He catches Phil, who’s standing respectfully to the side and who looks ready for anything, smiling at him and pulls a dramatically apathetic face in return. Phil smiles even wider at his expense, giving him a discreet thumbs up in an attempt to be supportive.

It works, despite his best efforts, and he has to turn away before he smiles.

Technoblade’s got nothing to worry about this time, just like he didn’t the last time he was dragged here to play with people who don’t take it seriously until it’s too late- but something in him wilts the slightest bit as he knows that he’ll have to kill people his own age or even younger again, and he can’t get out of it without bringing some sort of ridiculous shame on the family name. Apparently, the shade thrown when someone backs out of these kinds of things is ruthless, the kind of thing that can destroy your social status. Phil, who’s not actually a part of the family but is his personal guard and would suffer with the rest of his family, doesn’t deserve that. When he turns back around, his friend's shoulders are shaking.

Noting Phil’s poorly concealed laughter, Technoblade spots someone eating a cookie with a pig face on it and holds in a sigh.

* * *

As it turns out, he should have been a little more concerned about the games this year.

It’s not the game choice that does it- Technoblade’s actually the reining champion at Bedwars as much as he is at everything else; it’s not that hard to just run in and destroy someone’s bed before he drop kicks them into the void and then does it again with another person seconds later. Sure, he’s definitely got PTSD from the sounds of his own bed being destroyed a few times, and there’s been a couple of close calls where the only reason he won is that the other competitor fell into the void before he did, but it can be argued that the obsession he got with being sure that those things don’t happen again has made him even better. So no, Bedwars being the chosen game is not his undoing.

Neither is him underestimating the competition, which he’s always very careful not to do anyway.

This time, he’d screwed himself over and actually _overestimated_ the competition- hadn’t even considered that someone would be hiding in the map’s center like a coward. The second he’d destroyed the last bed and not immediately been taken from the game, he’d figured that there had to be someone left. So, after dumping every useless item into a chest and just taking a few pearls and a sword, he’d gone looking so he could just go back to Antarctica and do his antisocial thing until he got dragged back to the games again the next year.

Obviously, it didn’t go according to plan.

It’s frustrating- it’s not even someone decked out in armor who does him in, but a coward who’d hidden on the underside of the arena and then made an attempt to throw Technoblade directly into the void when he’d come around the corner. It had all happened pretty quickly, and he'd relied on instinct and training more than he had on any particular strategy. Someone had grabbed his arm, and he’d stabbed backwards on reflex and actually _hit_ something, but he was already tipping over the edge by the time that he realized what had happened. 

He hadn’t even really _seen_ the guy until he was staring up at the bottom of the arena floor, when the guy had watched him fall. Shaking in his dull chain boots and bleeding out through the fatal wound in his stomach. Problem is, he’s not bleeding out fast enough for the game to end before Technoblade gets too far away to be brought back.

The bottom of the arena isn't something that he can throw a pearl at and hit successfully. Despite the urge to try it anyway, he doesn't, giving in to the free fall and letting his brain go into overdrive.

So now, he’s been falling for a while, and the world under him is still so far away that he can’t even see it through the clouds that are also under him, if it even exists at all. He’s pretty sure that there’s a ground below him somewhere; the air is thinner here, which makes him think that he’s not falling through an endless void, but that he’s just really really high up. At this point, he's not sure which one would be worse.

He goes through the top layer of the clouds and comes out of the bottom with rapidly drying drops of water covering him from head to toe, soaking into his shirt and making it cling to his skin before it’s whipped dry.

Technoblade glares balefully up at the clouds before he looks down and startles the slightest bit. Assuming that he’s at a high altitude and then actually seeing that there’s ground below him are two very different things, and while he’s not often wrong, he’d honestly hoped that he was on this one.

He can’t see the ground well enough to tell if there’s water to land in, but he would think that the people who designed the arenas didn’t design them for more than one victor. It's obvious at this point that a void death is really just fall damage that takes a while.

Technoblade is willing to bet that there’s not even a stream down there as he tugs his helmet off and tosses it away. It’s not the fall that kills, considers Technoblade as he struggles out of his heavy chest plate without even fully unlacing the sturdy leather straps of it. The wind slaps his hair against his skin, the braided bun coming undone to be just a braid that acts as a whip against his wind-chapped face and making it astronomically more difficult to complete his task. The ground under him is close enough now that he can see that there definitely isn’t any water. The fall doesn’t kill people, as it can be quite nice to see everything-

But hitting the ground does.

Below him, he can see a sort of town set up a few miles from where he's going to hit the ground if he doesn't come up with a plan fast enough.

Technoblade, without siblings and a warm climate to turn to for entertainment, had studied more than the average child and had excelled at all academics that were thrust his way as a result. He knows a lot of things that others might call useless or strange. And it’s finally paying off now, he thinks grimly as he finally shoves the last pieces of his leg armor off and yanks at the velvet ribbon around his neck until it comes undone. His clumsy fingers just barely catch it before the wind rips it away, but he has it and he’ll take that as a win. His free hand digs into his pocket, nervous fingers slipping and sliding against an ender pearl’s surface before he’s able to grab it and finally pull it free. He ties one of the ribbon’s ends to the pearl, then the other end to the handle of his sword.

Here’s what he’s thinking is going to happen, based off of what he knows:

If Technoblade is remembering this right, the narrow point of the sword will cut through any air resistance, which will help it drag the pearl down faster. Otherwise, the pearl would fall slower than he would, despite it having a smaller surface area than he does, which would usually make it fall faster. If he can get the pearl to hit the ground first, he won’t die as a pancake on the ground. Hopefully.

Technically, the pearl should be hitting the ground anyway, but whoever farms them for the games does something that makes them fall slower than the person who throws them, no matter how much force is put into the throw. He'd never had a complaint about it before, but he'd never tried to throw one below him while in free fall either. There's a first time for everything.

Technically, the armor increased his surface area and was slowing his fall, as- again- weight has no effect on the fall rate of an object. It was a tactical decision to get rid of everything but his boots, as he couldn’t get to his neck with the chest plate on, couldn’t pull the chest plate off with the helmet on, and the pants would just look stupid if he wore them by themselves, like an over-armored pair of fisherman waders. Also, it made it harder to bend his knees, which he needs to do so that the shock of hitting the ground doesn’t shatter his knees if he happens to land feet first and not die immediately.

That’s it, his grand plan for surviving a free fall after falling into something that’s apparently not a void and that doesn’t have water to catch him.

When he manages to see past the hair that’s come loose from his braid and is blowing around his face, the ground is a lot closer than it was last time.

Feeling more than a little panicked, he clenches his fingers around the pearl, still tethered to the handle of his sword with the velvet ribbon that had been around his neck, and throws it below him as hard as he possibly can.

Now, he can only hope that it hits the ground before he does.

He only has to wait a few seconds after that thought before he goes from gracefully- and comfortably, thank you- free falling to being sprawled out on his back in the grass next to his sword that’s blade is so deep in the ground he’s not even going to put forth the effort to pull it out. Whoever gets the damn thing out can keep it, for all he cares, like that one book about the sword in the stone. He does take his ribbon back though, as it’s proven to be useful for more than choking him during social niceties like tea parties.

Slowly, as he did take some damage from falling the much shorter distance he'd given himself, he turns over and shoves himself up off of the ground to look around. He's landed in a meadow, which is surrounded on all sides by a wall of trees. Something in his chest loosens as he huffs out a tight laugh while he staggers to his feet. He's not dead.

As if to taunt him, he takes a step and nearly falls back down due to a shallow hole in the ground.

Technoblade is alive, and his bed wasn't broken when he'd fallen. Technically, if he dies right now, he’ll probably just pop back into existence in the arena; his bed had been left completely unguarded the entire game, save for a thin covering of wool, but he hadn’t heard the noise that told him that it was destroyed, hadn't gotten that hollow feeling in his chest when it happens. Going back is an option. But what exactly would he be going back to? Another trip back to his empire before he’s carted back out the next time it gets warm on the mainland? He’s got nothing to lose by staying here for a bit, aside from Phil.

A sharp pang goes through his chest when he thinks of Phil, who surely saw him fall off the arena’s edge through the broadcasting channel, who’s likely waiting for him because his bed had gone unbroken and no one has ever not come back when their bed is still intact. He imagines what the man would be doing now, as he’s already been gone for a little too long for it to be brushed off. The guilt comes crashing down around him, and Technoblade clenches his jaw against the unwelcome feeling.

He shoves the guilt down and comes to the conclusion that he probably just didn’t hear the noise of his bed being broken through all of the wind that had been rushing past his ears. Hadn't felt the hollow feeling of the magical tie he has to it because he'd been too focused on not hitting the ground from so far up. The chances of him being able to go back up are slim, even if his bed did make it.

(He knows, deep down, that his bed is still intact under it's pink wool covering- that he's making excuses to not go back.)

Besides- he can just find a way back when he’s able to, and it’s not like Phil wouldn’t enjoy a break from following him around all day.

Coming to the stubborn and guilty conclusion that there’s nothing to be done about it, Technoblade straightens his spine, squares his shoulders, and begins walking towards the treeline to gather supplies.

* * *

Technoblade, having been trained for any survival situation with or without snow, has a small house set up before night has officially fallen. Along with a basic farm and even an indoor campfire, he’s set for as long as he needs to be. The house is nice, for something that’s supposedly temporary as he takes an unauthorized vacation- it even has holes for a few windows that he’s going to put in tomorrow, and exactly one flower pot that he’s going to stick something in one day. Probably a cactus, because he's not great with plants but those don't need much water anyway and are supposed to be easy to care for. 

The house doesn’t have a door, which is going to be considered an unintentional tactical decision that his subconscious had come up with. Undead can’t break down what isn’t there, and he knows that he's going to be dealing with them here. He's just been sliding through the window holes- which are boarded up for the night- and he can keep doing that for as long as he needs to.

He’s gotten a bed as well, but he can’t bring himself to touch it for fear of something that he can’t quite explain, even to himself. Something just feels wrong about it, making him uneasy and unwilling to even smooth down the slightly wrinkled blanket on top of it. His eyes linger on it for a few long seconds before he slowly walks away from it and resigns himself to a very long night on the floor. 


	2. New Beginnings And Tiny Lemmings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3!!!!

“I can get it- I’ll pry the bitch out of the ground if it’s the last thing I do!”

“Why don’t we just leave it here and get one of the others to help or something?”

“Tubbo, it’s a sword. A diamond sword, and it’s enchanted. We aren’t going to _leave_ _it_ \- ”

  
  


One of the main reasons that he’d decided to stay for a little bit was the supposed lack of people in the area, ironically. Now, as he hears what has to be at _least_ two people screaming from what he can only assume is the meadow, Technoblade knows that he might as well kiss his guilt-ridden-but-introverted vacation goodbye. It was never really much of a vacation, as he hasn't even slept in a bed for the few days that he's been in the wooded area, but something inside of him still dies a little bit at the thought of his relative peace coming to a close so soon.

(He should have gone back the second he realized what had happened, should have slammed his sword into his chest and let his body fall-)

He’s outside hunting when he first hears them, screaming like they’re being murdered in broad daylight, and his initial thought is to just go back to his doorless house, climb through the window that still doesn’t have glass, and wait it out until they either actually die or go away. He's not going to get anything done with them scaring all of the animals in a five mile radius away, he might as well just wait for them to be gone. It's not the way that he should have thought to act, and he knows that, but here's the thing: Technoblade is introverted at heart, you see, and he’s in the category that avoids interaction like it’s the plague and who would choose to die alone in a box over having to go to a party. Still, he can admit, albeit grudgingly, that he’s a little curious as to who the hell is running around outside his newly claimed area, scaring all of the wildlife away and making his life complicated. Slowly, he creeps closer to the noise, hand on the end of his newly fashioned blade, and he peeks around a thick tree.

Children.

He should have known.

Technoblade’s a master of stealth- something he learned from the games and from sneaking around the empty hallways back in his parents’ empire. He can be silent while pressing his hand into a gaping wound, he can be silent when the floor is so cold that it burns his feet, and he can certainly be silent while he's in pleasant weather.

He can be quiet, that's not the problem.

The problem is that he's spotted seconds after stealthily peeking out from behind his hiding spot, and there's nothing he can do to stop what's already happened so he just throws himself back behind his blown cover and panics and curses his luck because there's no way that he wasn't seen just now. The kid, one of the two anyway, had puffed up like an angry ocelot.

They'd made _eye-contact._

He hears one of them shouting at him, probably the one who’d initially spotted him telling his friend to grab a weapon or something, and he presses his back to the tree even more, as if he'll simply blend into it if he tries hard enough. The bark is rough through the think silk fabric of his shirt, but he doesn't focus on it. The shouting is getting steadily louder by the second, making him nervous. Even so, his hands aren't shaking when they reach for his blade, and they still don't shake when he pulls it from its sheath to hold the weight of it in his hands. Technoblade is no stranger to battle, mostly due to the games, and his body is calm even as his mind screeches that he should just try running away first. There's no one watching him here, no pressure to kill someone for crowds of bloodthirsty spectators.

There's no reason for him to run someone through with his blade, not here and not now.

Slowly, still weighing the action even as he follows through with it, Technoblade returns his sword to it's holder on his hip and removes his hand from its end to get rid of any reflexes that might make him use it anyway. He still might if he's unable to stop himself in time, but at least his hand will actually have to move to the handle, rather than just close around it. There's something deep inside of him, something wild, that thrashes at the lack of violence in his intentions, that screams _it's him or them, doesn't he want to live-_

Technoblade ignores it, shoves it down, and he thinks.

His head pounds with anxiety, his stealth has failed him completely, and he needs to do something other than just stand there helplessly as the shouting gets even louder. He wants to run, but he'd be spotted instantly and he knows it. Maybe, it’s because he’s wearing a white shirt and shiny golden boots and he has pink hair, all of which come together to screw him over in the please-let-me-blend-in department but hold him up in the games when his presentation is hardly ruffled by the end of the bloodbath.

Maybe, just maybe, he can’t camouflage into the tree line when he’s wearing something like that, and maybe he should have thought of that before he counted on not being seen when he went to peer around the tree.

He’s hiding behind the broad trunk, trying to work out a plan and coming up with nothing good, when he begins to hear the stomping that joins the shouting. The sounds of bushes and tree limbs being pushed out of the way, of grass being trampled under sure feet-

A hand closes around his arm and he throws an elbow back on sheer instinct, ignoring how badly he startles at the touch that he'd known was coming. Something crunches against his elbow, probably someone’s nose, and he only feels a little guilty at the sound as he hooks his foot around someone's leg, drops them to the dirty forest floor, and darts a few feet away to give himself some distance. His hand goes for his blade on reflex, just as he'd assumed it would, but he pulls it away and instead keeps his hands loose and ready. It's not like he can't fight without a lethal weapon, he doesn't have to murder more kids just because they came after him. He's usually targeted in the games anyway, so this is nothing new to him.

(One year, everyone had agreed on an alliance until they got him down, which isn't technically against the rules. They'd all rushed him at once, shooting and throwing and stabbing, and they'd all fallen to his blade and cold face before more than a few hours had passed.

Phil had hugged him when he stepped out of the arena, even though he was covered in blood, even when that blood soaked into his own green clothes and stained the material an ugly brown.

"You did what you had to-"

Technoblade had shaken his head and been unable to meet the man's eyes, pulling away and into himself.)

“Jesus _Christ_ , man!”

He’s feeling a little more remorse now, as he whirls around to find the tallest child he’s ever seen in his life glaring up at him with blood running down his fingers that are clasped to his nose messily. It's like he's trying to hold it to his face, like Technoblade had somehow made it pop off or something, and the action is so young that he falters in his sureness for a second.

That's a kid, he thinks, that's a kid-

Then, a stick is swinging at him, which he deftly dodges before dropping into a more balanced stance and snapping himself back to the present. The second child, who’s much shorter than the first one, hefts the stick up again threateningly, and he consciously moves his hand away from his blade again. Technoblade can acknowledge his resourcefulness in the situation; however reckless it is to have a weapon that you’re not used to wielding, at least the kid’s got one. His blond friend, who’d rushed in weaponless and very unprepared, can’t say the same, and he has a bloody nose to show for it. The kids' eyes trail after his hand as he moves it away from his blade, both as suspicious of him as he is of them, like two different animals meeting for the first time and not knowing if the other is predator or prey.

Everyone pauses in that moment, and they take a few moments to just stare at each other and decide for sure.

“Why’s your hair pink?” the blonde kid asks finally, still holding a hand to his nose but seemingly deciding that he shouldn't get close again. Going from fighting to a conversation has never been something he’s really done; Phil always gives him some time after the games, waiting for Technoblade to come to him first. So, he can be forgiven for the awkward silence that he’d given in response as he just blankly stares at the kid, words not even on the tip of his tongue or caught in his throat, but completely absent.

“That’s a fairy, I think,” the other kid whispers loudly, eyeing his pointed ears and pink hair with figurative stars in his eyes. The stick is still in his hands, but it’s not as ready for use as it had been a second ago, more of like the kid has forgotten he even has it.

Technoblade, unused to people commenting on his ears of all things, slowly raises a hand and pushes his hair to cover them, gaining a frown from the two in front of him.

“No one fucking cares about your ears, your hair’s _pink_ ,” the blonde kid says, despite him actively trying to peer through the curtain of hair without even trying to be subtle in the least. Technoblade gives him an unimpressed look, raising an eyebrow at the kid's unrepentant shrug that he gives when he knows he's been caught.

“Sure,” Technoblade says warily, eyeing the kid up in case he tries to get much closer. He can’t be older than sixteen, maybe, and his friend looks to be around the same age.

(They would have been in the games this year if they came from nobility, and he hadn’t seen them there. That's a good thing, he thinks, even though something in his chest hurts and wants everyone else to hurt like he does.

Kids aren't supposed to kill each other.)

Technoblade can’t help but see them being below the games as a good thing; if these kids had been trained for the them, they wouldn’t have stopped- and he wouldn’t have either, if he's honest. It's not often that innocence saves you in this world, but the few rare cases of it are starling if he really takes the time to consider why that is.

“Why are there kids in the middle of the woods?” he asks to fill the silence that's fallen while he was thinking. It's immediately shattered when the blonde kid lets out a loud noise of offense, like Technoblade's just kicked him in the shin for the fun of it.

“Not a kid,” the blonde one says while pointing at himself, “Tubbo’s a child, I’m not-”

“We’re the same age, Tommy,” the smaller one- Tubbo, apparently- argues without any real anger; he's smiling slightly, even, like this is something natural for him to fall into. He seems much milder than his friend, even though he’s got a tree branch resting on his shoulder.

“Twelve,” Technoblade nods, like he gets what they’re saying completely and whole-heartedly. The bonde one puffs up again, even though he's laughing. His hands aren't over his nose anymore, and Technoblade is relieved to see that the bleeding has stopped and the bone is still straight.

“Bitch-”

“Yeah! Wait, wait- no. No, don’t say that-”

“Well he’s acting like a bitch,” the blonde one- Tommy- argues, hands coming up to wipe at his bloody nose again and looking pleased when he doesn't find any new blood. 

"You got a bloody nose from my elbow, don't talk to me," he drones, relaxing despite himself as the two kids joke and laugh and playfully shove at each other. It's not often that he gets the chance to see people interacting like this, because his life is hectic and filled with so much blood and schooling that, most days, he himself doesn't interact with anyone aside from Phil. So yeah, he can admit that seeing the two so relaxed, even if he doesn't know them beyond a bloody nose and a stick...

It's nice.

When Technoblade goes to keep hunting, they follow him like lemmings, continuing to ruin his day as they simultaneously change his life.

* * *

They don’t need adults, which Tommy declares very adamantly before he almost get's dragged into the river by a drowned undead that Tubbo then bashes with the stick until it lets go of his friend's ankle. They apparently just supervise each other, which is not a system that Technoblade sees as effective, but it’s not like he can talk; he supervised himself a majority of the time, and then his parents had hired Phil after he accidentally set the potions room on fire the first time.

And that very memory is why he finds himself sticking around to act as the new babysitter for two random kids, even though they scare all of the food away and splash in the stream and get him muddy by accident or via mudballs that are tossed in his direction on purpose.

His house isn’t the best, but it is incredibly flammable and karma’s been coming for him for a while.

* * *

“I mean, we call it free-shit meadow,” Tommy offers, like they have no idea that the free shit that they’re picking up is from the games, where people are brutally murdered. It's almost like the games don't even exist to these two, like this is their own little world and the arena isn't constantly suspended above their heads. When Technoblade looks up to point that out, mouth already open, he discovers that you can’t even see the arena and the words die in his throat because these kids could honestly have no idea. But surely, _surely_ these kids have noticed that the treeless meadow isn’t as bright as it should be. There’s not a cloud in the sky today, and yet the meadow remains pleasantly dim.

“It’s a little shady, isn’t it?” he hints as he squints up at the sky exaggeratedly, eyes still searching for even some sort of shadow to indicate the large area that blood spills across every year.

“That’s why we like it, actually!” Tubbo smiles, splashing up to the bank to flop down on the grass. Tommy is back over at the sword he'd heard them yelling about earlier, and Technoblade can hear him grunting as he fight with the ground for the right to claim it, as if it wasn't blood stained and tied with a red velvet ribbon.

God, what clueless morons these kids are.

Though some part of him relaxes at their lack of knowing about something so universally known. The bloodbath is celebrated every warm season, but these kids are untouched by it in a way that Technoblade hasn't even seen before now.

It's refreshing and curious, and he tells himself that that's the reason he stays with them all day, tells himself like it's an excuse when he's really just too tired to try and walk off at this point.

  
  


* * *

Technoblade slowly begins to realize that he doesn’t mind playing babysitter for the two; it’s nice to feel normal, and the kids don’t treat him like he’s a monster or a ruler or anything else but some weird forest-man who almost broke Tommy's nose before he even said a word. It’s an odd title, given to him by Tommy and enforced through its own repetition, but he can’t say that he minds it- his mother and father have certainly called him worse, as have the parents of everyone he’s slaughtered mindlessly during the games.

Weird Forest-Man is hardly an insult when put against that.

So he sticks around, his one-man vacation being crashed into and left in shambles by these two kids who find him no matter where he goes, every single day, without failing once. Living in such a noisy environment is something he’s been adjusting to, but it’s not necessarily a bad change when he really considers it. Phil always suggested he have more noise in his life, but Technoblade has always preferred to listen rather than speak, and the man has never pushed him past his comfort zone with things like this.

(Some days he hides and they don’t ever find him, but they know that he’s there anyway.

They call out to him, stupid small things that make him huff to himself from whatever tree he’s climbed into, and it’s so different from what he’s used to, so different from the silence and Phil's sad eyes and all of the training-)

The weather’s still as hot and miserable as ever, but he tries not to focus on it, even though he's out in it more thanks to Tommy and Tubbo.

He’s still sleeping on the floor, just to have a way to get back if he dies; he’s not even sure if his bed from the games is still there in that empty arena, but as long as there’s a chance of it sleeping in the new bed in his house feels wrong, like he's leaving Phil alone in that lavish empire.

By the third day of Tommy and Tubbo and sound, Phil has become a constant ache in his chest that doesn’t go away no matter how hard he tries to distract himself from it. Technoblade tries not to mind it too much, staying in the present and planting potatoes and teaching himself how to use a fishing rod for it's intended purpose, which isn't dragging people closer, apparently.

He does mind it when he hears Tommy talking to someone that’s definitely not Tubbo, the noise carrying in the open air of the meadow as they get closer and closer.

“You’ve gotta meet him, he’s so cool! And his hair- it’s pink, Wil. _Pink_ -”

“It is! It’s quite cool actually!” Tubbo chimes in happily as he and Tommy come into Technoblade's line of sight, dragging a man into the clearing behind them. They're seemingly filled with endless chatter as they tell this new guy all about Technoblade’s hair, of all things. The poor guy looks exhausted by the two already- which Technoblade relates to very heavily now that he’s become the unofficial babysitter- but he also looks mildly curious, despite the tired slump to his shoulders. Curiosity, he thinks as they tug the man closer and closer to their usual meeting spot in the meadow, is dangerous no matter who you’re facing. Even if Wil, whoever he is, doesn’t look very intimidating at first glance, Technoblade reminds himself to be careful; he’s wearing some kind of yellow sweater that makes him look softer, more charming almost.

(Technoblade would be a fool if he let himself be calmed by a fluffy shirt and a calm demeanor- the soft looking guy’s tall enough that Techno tenses up before he realizes that he’s not going to be pitted against this guy in the games. Even with that in mind, he takes a few steps back- just in case. )

Wil or whoever he is probably isn’t going to be happy when he sees him.

He’s immediately spotted by the two boys, but the man is too busy sighing to notice him at the moment. Thumping the man’s arm, both of the boys look away from Technoblade just long enough for him to duck behind a tree and begin walking away as fast as he dares, boots silent for once as he sneaks away.

“Wil! Wilbur! This is-”

Technoblade is long gone by the time that the group turns around to find him.

“Techno?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S LATE AND RUSHED, I'M SORRY. I FORGOT ABOUT THIS FIC <3

**Author's Note:**

> Please tell me what you think! I'll try to fix it if he's too ooc, as I want this fic to not majorly suck!
> 
> I'm not abandoning the Dream fic, I just had so many ideas for this, and now I can bounce between the two! <3


End file.
